Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
REECE
T he ranch had been quiet for days, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.
I’d been staying in Booker’s house while Xander took the cottage. It was only supposed to be temporary, and then I noticed Booker had moved what was left of my things into his closet. Once I went through the wreckage, a few things had been salvageable, but I was desperately in need of a shopping trip soon. Otherwise, my future held a lot of laundry nights.
We’d fallen into a routine of waking up in the morning and making love until we couldn’t ignore the world any longer. I spent my mornings with Bullet and Spirit, making sure they had everything they needed and their feed was made up for the day. Booker was in the process of hiring a new ranch hand and doing as much as he could to help Hank and Cliff while he had his broken arm.
Xander was less than impressed with him, but he was busy enough with some secret project that Booker kept slipping away without him noticing.
The afternoons were full of business planning and social media content creation, and I was just about done with designing a temporary website for the ranch. Trying to persuade Booker to go full cowboy for TikTok was proving harder than I thought it would be, but the account was slowly growing without him.
I’d have to pull out all my powers of persuasion to get him to cooperate, though. And I was thoroughly up for the challenge.
“You need a name,” I said, looking up from the computer and finding Booker staring at me in confusion.
“I have a name.”
“No, a name for the ranch. You all just use your family name around here, and I get it. It makes sense when it was just a ranch. But you need a business name. Something that suits what you want to achieve here. And I need it by tomorrow so I can buy the domain name and launch the website,” I added quickly before bolting from my desk and heading for the kitchen.
This was my soon-to-be patented approach to dealing with Booker. Information drop and then run. By the time he caught up with me, he was too distracted by the chase to go into full grumpy denial mode.
Not that I didn’t love helping him work out the grumpy denial mood. It was a hard job, but I was here with it. When it came to Booker, I’d take one for the team any day of the week. Hell, any hour of any day. The man was a magician in bed, and even having a broken arm hadn’t slowed him down.
“I don’t want to change the name,” he shouted from the office we’d put together. “I like calling it the ranch.”
“The Ranch.” I shrugged. “Maybe that could work. Sounds a bit dystopian prison thriller, though.”
Booker wheeled his chair through the office door and glared at me. “It does not.”
“Welcome to The Ranch,” I said in the creepiest voice I could muster, hunching my shoulders as I tapped my fingertips together.
“Well, anything sounds creepy when you say it like that.” He sulked, wheeling himself back into the office.
The seed was planted.
I was getting great at this.
“I’m going to change Spirit’s hay net, and then I’m making lunch,” I called out as I slipped on my boots and headed out the door.
It was so beautiful out here. Even the restless anxiety inside me couldn’t fight against the peaceful atmosphere of the ranch. It would be beautiful out here when the full height of summer hit us. Hopefully, Booker’s arm would heal well enough that we could take a picnic up the trail again.
My cheeks warmed with thoughts of our last picnic as I walked into the barn, heading into the shadowy back storage area where Booker had the feed stored and a little kitchenette set up. I’d already filled the hay nets this morning and had a line of buckets laid out ready with Spirit’s feed. She was off the salt water and nearly solely on normal feed now that her weight was going up. I kept sneaking her an extra alfalfa hay net through the day anyway because she loved them so much.
I was probably going to make her fat, but I figured she deserved to be pampered, and I was pretty sure Booker knew exactly what I was doing and would have stopped me by now if I was doing anything wrong.
I heard a whiny coming from Spirit’s stable and Bullet banging around in his. Maybe I could ask Booker if we could put them next to each other. That’s what they seemed to want anyway, and Cole had already confirmed days ago that Spirit wasn’t carrying any diseases or anything that she could pass to him.
It was cute that the two of them were getting so close to each.
A loud bang came from Bullet’s stable as I lifted the hay net over the door for Spirit, and I turned to look at it with a frown.
He wasn’t normally this aggressive.
“Do you want a hay net too, boy?” I asked, hoping just talking to him would be enough to calm him down.
Bullet didn’t normally have another feed until this evening because he was already healthy and strong. But maybe an extra something wouldn’t hurt. Lord, we’d have a whole ranch of fat horses if it was down to me.
I quickly secured the hay net and then decided to see if I could talk some sense into Bullet as another loud crash came from the stable. He was still healing, and having him injure himself more wasn’t what anyone wanted.
“What’s all the noise about, hey?” I purred as I walked over to his stable noise.
“Oh, it’s just us boys getting acquainted,” Camden’s voice responded.
I should have run to Booker. I should have pulled out the damn cell phone in my pocket that he’d made me carry around. Instead, I rolled back my shoulders, and I let the anger that had been building inside rule my emotions.
I never claimed to be smart.
“Crawled back out of the gutter, I see. Nothing better to do than irritate the horses?”
Camden threw back his head and laughed as Bullet pranced back at the sound. Standing inside that stable wasn’t the smartest thing Camden had ever done, but judging from the long piece of wood in his hand, I guessed he thought threatening the horses was the best way to get whatever it was he wanted.
“You always were amusing, Reece. Not that smart, though. You should have stayed off social media. It didn’t take any effort to get a PI to track you down once you logged on,” he said, tapping the wood against the palm of his hand. “Now, here’s the deal, sweetheart. You’re going to give me the files you stole from me, or I’m going to break this horse’s leg.”
“That hardly seems like a deal worth taking,” I said calmly, trying not to let the panic show in my voice.
“It’s his leg or yours.” Camden turned to me with that smarmy smile on his face. He was enjoying himself. This was the sort of thing he got off on, and I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid not to see it before. “You have to be punished for the things you do, Reece. Don’t you remember the first lesson I gave you?”
“I remember you beating me because you didn’t get your way. Is that the lesson you’re talking about?” I asked sweetly.
“You never used to have such a big mouth. Clearly, your first lesson didn’t stick. You could always come home, you know. No one knows about this stupid fanciful vacation you’ve taken. All could be forgiven. You don’t need to stay in this dump. You could stand by my side, and we could do something great…” His voice started that strange croon he did when he thought he was being persuasive, but really, it just turned my stomach at the sound.
But at least his attention was on me. I could see in his eyes how much he wanted me. The fervor had him licking his lips, and then he sighed. It made me feel like I needed a shower to wash away the feeling of his gaze drifting across my body.
“I’m going to stop you right there,” I told him, holding up my hand. “I’d rather choke to death on my own vomit than allow you anywhere near me. The chances of me stepping foot into your home again are less than Bullet here bearing your first child. Now, this is what’s actually going to happen. You’re going to put down your stick and pretend for one moment that you can be an actual functioning adult. Then you’re going to walk out of here, get in your car, and drive away. There’s nothing for you here, Camden.”
My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I was sure it was about to leap out of my mouth. All I needed was for him to come out of the stable and away from Bullet. I didn’t much care what was about to happen to me.
I’d healed from Camden once, and I’d do it again if I had to. But I wasn’t about to let him hurt an innocent animal just because he thought it would make him a big, scary man.
Camden laughed, his arms resting over the top of the stable door as he rested the piece of wood over his shoulder.
“I’ve got a much better idea, baby.”
“No one calls her baby but me,” Booker growled from behind me, his arm coming over my shoulder as he grabbed Camden by the collar and then pulled him straight off his feet and over the top of the stable door.
I scurried to the side, my eyes wide as I watched Booker dump Camden onto the ground at his feet.
And there he stood, like my avenging angel, about to put all the wrongs in the world right for me again.